Darkest Before Dawn
by Skyblaze
Summary: Things will always fall apart...but isn't there always hope?. Warning - Not the happiest of fics!


Darkest Before Dawn  
  
This is hard for me to say,  
But you took it all away,  
I just couldn't make you stay,  
You didn't need me anyway  
  
The boardroom doors swung shut behind him, the well-oiled hinges barely making a sound. The latch clicked quietly, but to Michael, that tiny sound reverberated in his chest like the clanging of a prison door. He stood in the luxurious wood-panelled anteroom; staring blankly at his boots, hardly noticing how heavy his breathing had become, too busy listening to the stinging, harsh words that had been spoken only a few minutes ago.   
His services were no longer required. Ten years of helping people in impossible situations, striving to fulfil Wilton Knight's dream and this was how he was repaid. Most of the board had sat impassively as his sentence was handed down. Michael had seen sympathy and regret in only two faces...but Jennifer Knight, she had been smirking, mocking him with her cold smile.   
He felt like screaming, like pounding his fists into the panelled wall until his hands were torn and bloody...but he didn't, mainly because he knew that Kitt would give him a severe talking to if he did.  
Kitt...  
Oh, god. How was he going to explain this to Kitt?  
---  
  
I was your Confidante and brother,  
And in some ways, even lover,  
I just don't want any other,  
Still you left me all alone.  
  
A constant drizzle fell to Earth in a shimmering silver curtain, soaking everything. It was a cold rain, the kind that seemed to seep right into his bones, leaving him aching and weary. Today he felt his age. He could feel the years pressing down on his shoulders, putting a kink in his spine. After today, he knew he might never again walk as tall, move as swiftly, and glare as fiercely.   
The black-clad mourners all around him stood to a kind of attention as they watched the coffin lowered into the earth.   
"Ashes to ashes..."   
Michael watched with a kind of numb sadness as he watched his friend of ten years being buried. Devon had been more than just his employer; he'd been a friend and teacher, almost a father to everyone at FLAG. But still, Michael couldn't cry. He'd done so much crying recently that he had nothing left in him to give. He felt emotionally wrung out.   
As the service began to break up, another one of the mourners drifted over to him. Bonnie's eyes were red from crying, and devastation was written in their depths. Michael looked at her in sympathy, knowing how much she had to be hurting just now. Bonnie had loved Devon as a father, and his death must have been a real blow to her, even though she had left FLAG over a year ago.  
"Michael." She said softly.  
"Bonnie." He acknowledged her quietly as she ducked under his umbrella, even managing to give her a slight smile. She looked up into his clear blue eyes.  
"I...heard about what happened," She said tentatively, "I'm sorry."  
Michael slipped on his poker face, trying his best not to react.   
"How's Kitt taking it?" She asked, and Michael couldn't help but remember all those little scenes of Motherly love that had played out between Bonnie and Kitt. But his response was out of his mouth before he could stop it.  
"Badly." He said bluntly. Bonnie looked away, drawing her jacket closer to her body as if to protect herself from the guilt that washed through her.  
"Is there anything I can do?" She asked, her voice trembling slightly. He looked her over, part of him wanting to rage at her for abandoning them, to throw Kitt's pain at her departure right in her face. But he couldn't. She had been family for too long.  
"No." He said bitterly, "There's nothing that anyone can do."  
Bonnie looked stricken, as though he had just slapped her in the face. Michael didn't wait for her to say another word; he just turned and walked away.   
"Michael!" She called to him, her voice close to breaking, "I wish things hadn't turned out this way."   
Her turned back to face her, the shadows in his eyes making him look older.  
"I wish I could believe that." He replied.  
  
The journey back to his new home was every bit as painful as he expected. The car he rode in was silent, dead and his only companions throughout the entire awful trip were his own dark, bitter thoughts as he wrestled with the alien controls.   
He slammed the car door shut with far more force than necessary, enough to make the car bounce slightly on its suspension. He looked at the Toyota for just a second, deciding that he hated that car, deciding that he hated any car that wasn't the Knight2000. Suddenly unable to stand the sight of it, he turned and walked up the gravel driveway to his front door, fumbling with the keys. He stumbled into the front room, almost banging his shin on one of the boxes that still littered the floor. Apart from the boxes, the room only contained a single chair, and a TV. The only decoration was a single framed picture that had been taken years ago of him, Devon, Bonnie and Kitt. He picked up the picture, seeing it as a freeze frame of happier times when his life had actually had purpose. Looking into those smiling, happy faces, Michael felt rage boil up inside him unstoppably and with an inarticulate cry he drove his fist into the glass, sending a web of cracks out from where his fist had connected.   
He couldn't stand it. He couldn't stand for the only record of his beloved partner to be in a single snapshot. He knew his own memory would eventually begin to fade and die, and Michael didn't want Kitt's life to be a forgotten memory. Kitt was so unique, so special, he deserved more than that.   
And Michael Knight, too, would eventually be gone. All his good deeds counting for nothing as he was dismissed as an urban legend, resigned to the dustbin of history. A mere shadow in a shadowy world.   
Was this what his life had come to? Was he condemned to live the remainder of his life as a ghost? Michael clenched his fists, wondering if Wilton had known what he was doing when he had created Michael Knight. Wondered if he had known that he would forever condemn Michael to live like a whisper in the night.  
"You bastard!" Michael screamed up at the ceiling, directing his tirade towards the uncaring sky, "Do you know what you did to me? You ruined my whole fucking life! God damn you straight to Hell, Wilton!"  
---  
  
Silence is the sound of death. It presses in on you, crushing you under its leaden weight. Silence can numb the heart and deaden the emotions.   
Kitt was surrounded by silence, by a blank oblivion that stretched out into infinity.   
Was this how KARR felt when he was deactivated? Kitt wondered. Surrounded by the silence, with rage and betrayal building up inside him?   
The worst part of all this was the betrayal, knowing that those who had created him had now slated him for deactivation and destruction. If KARR had felt like this, then Kitt could certainly understand why he had turned on all those associated with the Foundation.   
'Michael...why did you have to leave me?'  
Intellectually, Kitt knew why Michael hadn't been able to stop it. But that didn't make the feelings of betrayal and abandonment go away.   
Things always fall apart. It is the nature of the world. Everything was condemned to impermanence and decay.   
No matter how hard you tried to stop it, entropy always claimed you in the end.   
---  
  
Alan McIntyre checked the address for the fourth time as he pulled his Jaguar to a halt outside the small house. Alan ran a hand nervously through his short black hair nervously. He knew he was probably the absolute last person that Michael would want to see right now, but he had to try and talk to him.   
Alan was a relatively new member of the Knight Industries board of directors, and also had the dubious distinction of being the youngest member. He was a dot.com millionaire, having made his first million at the age of 22. He knew some of the older members of the board resented him, seeing him as a newbie with no idea how the game was played.   
Even so, Alan had fought with all his might against the proposals to fire Michael Knight and put and end to FLAG...though he hadn't been very surprised when Jennifer Knight and her minions had soundly beaten him and his supporters.  
It was wrong to just end FLAG that way. Michael and Kitt and the others had done so much good work, helped so many people, and the board wanted to dump them like so much dirty laundry. And of course, there was Kitt. He was a special, unique being with a life and personality all his own. Kitt was a science fiction dream come true, and the callousness of simply ending Kitt's wonderful existence had shocked Alan to the core.   
The young millionaire stuck his hand into his pocket and took out a black key card embossed with the Knight Industries chess piece symbol.   
This key could mean the survival of Wilton Knight's dream. With a decisive movement, Alan got out of the car and headed up the gravel driveway.  
One man could make a difference.  
Perhaps today, he could be that man.  
  
THE END 


End file.
